HalfwayToGone

Depends where his project is and whether he has any sample of his writing or previous published work. I have a friend who wrote a novel and had a hell of a time getting it published, but it did get done eventually, and she then got included in another book with multiple authors and got to do public appearances for it, etc. persistence pays off sometimes.

You don’t need a publishing attorney to reach out, you need an agent. The attorney is for any deal you land to ensure you’re not getting screwed over. Managers and agents handle the reaching out to or receiving communication from others to initiate business transactions. You’d want to hit up Ray Danniels at SRO for a thing like this unless he’s no longer working for Rush at all.

Everyone is bald underneath their hair. Neil has a very receded hairline, but he has hair on top still, and he cuts it super short before tour. He has explained why the silly kufi before, and it had something to do originally with wanting to replace the baseball cap he wore under his headphones with something more comfortable/without a brim, if I recall correctly. He usually only wears it when drumming, like part of the uniform. Tshirt, kufi, something to prevent kick pedal beater from getting caught in pant leg. Anyhoodles, going off topic as usual. Big Al, looks pretty relaxed. That black LP custom though...(drool).

Actually, the band could just as easily have been permanently done in ‘97 and almost was.

Did he remember you? I told him I was at the Grapes Under Pressure, he said "oh, right, thanks for showing up!". But it was way too quick. He wasn't allowed to sign my Permanent Waves CD... :( It's like the 'meet and greets', which are 30 seconds long. The book signing is probably 5 seconds long. Whereas if you attend an event like 'Grapes Under Pressure' where you shell out a huge amount of money, then you have time to talk with your musical heroes more. It's all about 'money' or 'time' and/or both combined isn't it? Nowadays, maybe. Back in the day, I had the ultimate good fortune to be invited to a similar cocktail party type aftershow party, and it was free. But it also was around the 20th anniversary of the first US tour, they were in NYC for two nights, and Atlantic Records was based there and threw the parties. Also it was long before other bands started selling meet and greet and vip packages and tiers of ticket pricing.

My brother (a guitar lifer) is both a huge fan of Jan Akkerman from focus, and a huge fan of making fun of Geddy yodeling, so it’s possible he’s onto something... Seriously, though, that’s a pretty interesting mashup. The EVH part is the head scratcher. I can see Focus, because super high-pitch vocals and epic-length instrumental-friendly songs. EVH? Only the thing you pointed out (Focus and VH both had songs called Eruption that heavily featured the gee-tar). Otherwise I got nothing.

Yeah, I totally hear ya. I couldn’t tell you how many early Primus shows I saw before they really blew up. I remember seeing them with fishbone and on the frizzle fry tour opening for 24-7 Spyz and then a bunch of times in smallish venues before they opened for Rush. Chatted w/Tim Alexander when they were on Lollapalooza with AIC and fishbone and RATM (their first big tour probably). When Tim left/was dismissed I got the first album with Brian Mantia only because I liked Praxis a lot (Bootsy, Buckethead, Bernie Worrel and Brian). I lost track of them after that one, until finally going to catch the last tour w/mastodon.

You could be right—I have no idea what the publishing or sales numbers are.

Back in the RTB tour days, Les referred to Geddy as “The King Daddy-O” of bass. I’m now curious about how Sean Lennon experienced that or if anyone saw anything coming from whatever social media he has (if any). Never thought about what Sean’s musical taste might be, and I don’t remember if I ever heard an interview where he talked about it.

I was just noticing yesterday that this show is coming to Brooklyn in less than a week. Tempted to check it out, but it would be a long ride on a weeknight. What I’m really waiting for is this supposed bunch of dates with Primus opening for Slayer.

I’d be surprised if they don’t have a second printing. It’s not like the book got dusty on shelves before stock dwindled. It was only about 4 months. That said, they could go straight to a soft cover edition to get buyers who passed but might go for a cheaper option.

There was a social media post by rushbackstage claiming they were the only store with remaining stock a week or two ago, so that would make sense.

I’m sure I don’t have a favorite

Are they just the store front now or are they designing too? I think in general the creative spark left after the Clockwork Angels Tour I’m pretty sure there are still in-house merch people generating band merch ideas, like some of the recent limited tshirt releases (Geddy’s and Neil’s “stage tees”). Musictoday just deals with the retail sales, warehousing and shipping of things. My current order, btw, showed up the day I posted this.

I think Hold Your Fire was the first one for me where I started to hit the “suck button” (aka skip track button) on more than one song

Musictoday runs it now. I don’t care for them much—my experience with them has been storied, as they took over the Soundgarden store at some point when Chris Cornell was still around, and I had the misfortune of ordering something that got massively delayed with pretty much zero communication from them until I contacted them to ask what was going on. It was a limited vinyl release from subpop records and by the time I was asking, it was already jacked up on ebay to double the price. The good part is, they did come through on the records, but no one could give any kind of explanation that made sense when they were waiting forever—not even something like, “we were expecting it before release date, but our shipment got lost/misdirected/caught in a sharknado/whatever.” Since they took over Rush’s store I ordered a couple of things and so far they’ve done much better, including handling a damaged item exchange nicely/right away. I currently am waiting for tshirts that shipped and are now lost in the wonderful world of USPS since the 15th—arrived locally that day, got transfered to a different distribution center and has sat there since. Tracking says order will be arriving late, but it’s just sitting for 4 days now. That’s all on the post office, though. I think the musictoday shop has gotten a bit better organized unless I’m just lucky. Maybe they only suck when it comes to informing people when something with a planned release date doesn’t show up on time.

Yeah that sounds about right. I had a less awkward but not entirely different encounter with him at the same afterparty when I met Alex and Geddy. He was quite protected in a round booth, and while I was waiting for someone to finish getting a snapshot with Geddy, he shuffled out of the booth and walked right past me, and ducked into an elevator. All I could muster was “no way, he’s gonna leave” to myself and my buddy next to me as he got in and the door shut. I made no attempt to approach or delay him or anything, because I already knew by then that he was uncomfortable with fans freaking out over him. What I failed to notice (according to my buddy—I was so focused on Geddy I completely missed this) is that he supposedly returned after a few minutes and shuffled back to his spot in the booth with his friends. It’s probably for the best, though—I totally would have walked over and intruded on his group if I saw he was back. This was on the Counterparts tour, over 20 years ago.

100% agree with you on that. I got hammered here on another thread last week for daring to suggest that Neil haters were reading too much into an incident with Stewart Copeland that was pitched as proof that Neil is a dick. I said, maybe he didn’t see him and no one told him that he was waiting to see him, and I was pretty sure based on actual things they say about each other that Neil is a big fan and would have been psyched to meet him. You’d think I said something bad about the Neil-haters’ mothers.

Actually, as soon as Entwhistle died, I was hearing “Oh it must have been all that coke he was doing” from people who were avid Who fans before it was ever mentioned on the news. The “alcoholic nose” is certainly one possible explanatiion but so is Rosacea. Usually with those late signs of chronic alcohol abuse you expect more than just one visible sign, but that doesn’t prove anything. I certainly hope he’s not overdoing it, but some people have real issues with retirement, so it certainly is a possibility. He comes off as a bit too involved with his child to be sucking down scotch all day, but that doesn’t stop everybody, so you never know.

I still like GUP after all these years. Out of 8 songs, there’s not one that I think, “ oh that one really sucked” and Neil is pretty damn impressive all over it. I think they still had a relatively balanced sound as far as keeping guitars prominent and utilizing a lot of synth without it taking over completely. Once the sampling came in on power windows, it got a little too crazy. I think they grew a lot on it musically though—more emotionally rich songs than previously when they were more hard rock.

I have a bit of that collector mentality myself, and have lusted after vintage gear as soon as my brother and I started to become obsessed with learning to play our respective instruments, and I got to borrow vintage paiste hihats, and a ludwig snare for a couple of months. Being around wannabe gear hoarders for most of my life, it’s fascinating to hear more inside info about how this stuff came into being. I never knew the founder of ampeg (company that made the easily most highly sought electric bass amp and speaker cabinet in my circle of musicians) was a vehement hater of electric bass and thought it would never catch on as a serious instrument. That actually blew me away a little bit

I don’t know where he is on the spectrum of scotch drinkers or drug users currently. A reliable source told me essentially that he and his first wife were avid bong-hitters and otherwise not very much of anything else as of the early 90s (but that’s 25 years ago). This was from another musician who was personally friendly with them/was a guest at their home a few times. But everyone knows he likes the Macallan, because he writes about it. We just don’t know if it’s a lot of it or just one or two cocktails a day, which is not nothing, but far from drinking up a storm. I never heard tell of a coke habit, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Anyway, last time I saw a snapshot of him on social media, he looked as healthy or healthier than you’d expect for a guy closing in on age 70–staying active, not blowing up in weight or wasting away. Just being a guy with other guys he knows. If he’s abusing himself like a fiend, he’s not showing it very quickly—coke and that really hard-partying will age people prematurely and saddle people with all kinds of gout, heart failure, strokes, bleeding, ulcers, caved in nasal septums, liver disease, pancreatic failures, etc.

I was always optimistic that they were just retired from touring, and would pop up and play here or there for one-offs, but it’s pretty obvious that was wishful thinking. Neil hasn’t even posted a single time on his own website in nearly 3 years. You’d think he’d still be interested in blogging since it can be done at home in spare time, and doesn’t require super-human feats of endurance like his performance in concert does, but his complete silence says it all. He is really retired. His bodyguard occasionally posts a shot of him in his natural habitat or on vacation, but he posts nothing whatsoever himself anymore. If he plans on putting out more books, he’s been very quiet about it. The CA thing seems to have petered out with the comic book—sort of silly/redundant idea after they already put out a hardcover graphic novel, and two regular novels. There’s no mention of him doing anything special for the touring compendium coming out soon—Stewart Copeland did an afterword, though, and from his social media does not at all seem retired yet. FWIW, though, if he gets enough rest and takes good care of himself, he may be in better shape to play a reunion show someday without hurting himself, and if he’s not touring and beating himself silly riding his beemer through every dirt road he can get to, I imagine he’d have much less wear and tear on his body playing a few occasional concerts in one spot once in blue moon. But it would be a longshot—he doesn’t like compromise when it comes to this stuff, and I doubt he could do a show without first practicing for a couple of months to get in shape, etc. Makes sense for a big tour, but not a one off, and there’s more pressure when you aren’t playing a ton of dates—you only get one shot at having a great show. It remains to be seen if there will ever come a time when Neil figures out how he can enjoy coming out of retirement whether it be for one show, or a few, or to release another book or whatever.

Well you don’t pay attention then, or maybe you have Alzheimer’s. My first post about the whole thing was just suggesting that everyone calling Neil a dick for running right past Stewart Copeland were probably reading too much into it, as he is a huge Stewart Copeland/Police fan. Which is 100% true. That’s about all I said in a longer-winded and sarcastic way. Then you had to come and chime in and start your “I know you are but what am I” bullshit, and said I’m the one reading too much into it (you know, me, the guy who is reading absolutely nothing into it, and by the way never even said I was 100% sure Neil wasn’t just being a dick, just that I have my strong doubts based on what is actually known about the two guys). That’s when I hammered you and waved my credentials in your face—after you tried to accuse me of having none. Forgive me for defending myself. And forgive me for daring to be sarcastic in the first place, so superior of me! I should be gracious and sweet when someone assumes with poor information that Neil Peart acted like “a dick.” And it’s not a superior attitude at all to call someone a dick, by the way, while we’re all scolding me for being edumacated and having the gall to mention it here. It’s very deferential always. Have a nice night, dick. See? Sweet amd gracious. Ok, I’m officially done with this. And with all seriousness, my apologies to the original poster, who was just trying to profess his love of Rush and KISS only to have Neil haters start chiming in about what a dick of legend he is. And my apologies for continuing to veer it off course after Mr. “I think I’m Sigmund Freud, but I’m not even Sigmund the Sea Monster” decided to come at me.

Apparently, those who pre-order this book from rushbackstage.com will receive a “free gift.” No idea what that might be, but I’m guessing some little chatchke like a keychain or something.